Hello my name is Donovan Gipson and my Start up idea is based through my time in the military and navigating life after leaving. The military is a great tool Americans use when they are facing challenging life decisions and are looking/searching for direction and discipline within their own life. When joining you go through extreme rigorous training for 12 weeks to break you down and eventually build you up to be a strong and willing solider. That training is amazing for entering the military, as we are all in great shape, strong mentality, and newfound sense of community which some may have never found before. This helps lift the spirit of the soldier and helps them flourish within their military career. My startup idea is to tackle the forever growing death/suicide rate within all branches of the military. I want to create an infrastructure where as soldiers who has given majority of their life or soldiers transitioning out of the service have the same opportunity to be as built up as they once were when entering the service. Too many times has a veteran committed suicide because they had no plan after leaving the military either by choice or by force. My plan is to allow 12 weeks for soldiers who are leaving the service to start the training to leave and enter the civilian world. This program would call for physical fitness training, job searching along with M.O.S or not, and mental health checks and assessments before fully leaving the service. The physical fitness training would mirror the same training soldiers would go through as if they were in basic but a lot less strict as they have still earned their title of solider. The physical fitness requirements through the military change based on jobs and rank leaving some with less desirable bodies and mindsets, The physical training is to get their mind and body right so the soldier feels good about themselves and ready to take on the civilian world with all the tools necessary to be successful.
Helping soldiers who are leaving the service find jobs is Critical to the betterment of the solider, a lot of the time solders join wanting the M.O.S that's "pays the best" or the ones that "don't require a lot of training" etc. This sets them up for failure if the job they do within the service would not be available to them outside of it. For this we need CO's and NCO to be willing to work with these solders in helping them find something in the outside that would help them live comfortably, Leaving the service with a job lined up gives solders a sense of security and not feeling like they do not know what their next step is. Setting just these two steps up for solders leaving the service would drastically improve how they feel entering the regular world once again. We take civilians and turn them into strong solders, as a service we need instill a program that takes solders and builds them up to be functioning members of society. The final check on the list before solders would be processed out is an series of assessments done by credited mental health professionals, it is no secret what members of the military go through and see on a daily basis living overseas and hazardous environments but also just living in the barracks on base. They are faced with tons of adversity and constantly being told what is right and what is wrong. These assessments are to gage whether the service thinks this solder would enter the regular world functioning on high level as they require within the service or could they be a danger to themselves or to society. This helps the solder themselves feel human again in that the service is actively concerned about the well being of their solders not just the high functioning ones who do well within the service repeatedly but also for the ones who decide that this lifestyle wasn't for them or ones who gave their everything to the service.
Email: dmgi228@uky.edu
Project Owner
Donovan Gipson